GUIDEBOOK

Ballarat
AUSTRALIA
People, Culture and Place
Susan Fayad, Coordinator Heritage Strategy, City of Ballarat and Prof. Keir Reeves, Director, Collaborative
Research Centre in Australian History (CRCAH) Federation University Australia.
1. Layers of the site
Ballarat is best known as an exemplar mid-19th century Victorian gold rush city. It is located in
the western region of the State of Victoria in Australia and is of state-wide importance being the
largest inland city in the state and a major driver of regional growth and development.
Ballarat is a city of communities, home to many diverse peoples, each contributing their own
culture, ideas and aspirations to the city’s identity. Ballarat’s story is one of layered change over
millions of years: the natural landscape formed 500 million years ago, whilst modern Indigenous
people, the Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung, have deep connections to this ancestral country
spanning back at least 50,000 years.
Ballarat’s urban heritage and diverse community is more recent: it is one of the world’s most
substantial and intact mid-19th century historic gold rush cities and one of the most important
mass migrations of people during the search for gold. The intensity of this time is most evident in
central Ballarat with the city’s urban form established during the first 20 years of the gold rush.
Today, the city is considered the capital of Western Victoria and its key points of difference are
its regional location and distinctive cultural identity. Ballarat is renowned for its intact historic
streetscapes of public and commercial buildings, grand to humble housing, civic spaces, gardens
and plantings. It is also acknowledged for its great lifestyle, significant cultural institutions and
much loved calendar of festivals and events.
The HUL Guidebook | 21